Almost But Not Quite Free
by jivvin
Summary: There were only two of them on the edge of the roof that night. Bruce looked like, maybe, he wanted to jump, Tony looked like he could use another drink. The silence stretched.


_I rise to the sky, and my shadow lies in the cliffs,_

_Small as the eye of the mouse._

_I come down to the ground, and my shadow meets me_

_Like my brother._

_M. and S. Dyachenko, "The Ritual"_

As much as Tony Stark believed his life to be unique and special, he had it just like the rest of the lesser mortals: there were good days and bad days. On a good day, he would have returned from the premiere showing of Batman: The Dark Knight Rising with a sense of mild satisfaction (he really only went for Pepper's sake), ready to spend the night in the arms of the woman he loved, not caring about a damn thing.

It was barely the case. Mainly because he woke up exactly three hours after falling asleep in his and Pepper's bed, with some vague memories of a dream – _the black and the lights, like a coloured mist_ – but without a single desire to do anything. Not even a thought of his workshop seemed to cheer him up, and _that_ could only mean one thing.

_I need a drink._

He left the bedroom as quietly as he could and moved across the living room to the bar without turning the lights on. He quickly poured himself some scotch from the first bottle he saw and downed it.

_Okay, not just _one _drink_.

As he poured another glass, Tony looked around and then settled his gaze on the view from the wall-sized windows of the north wall. To his surprise, he spotted the lone figure on the far side of the Iron Man suit landing pad, barely visible against the dark sky. There was no need to ask JARVIS for the man's identity – there was really only one option.

Bruce.

_Just for how long he has been there_? _And why?_ Tony wondered. Bruce's own room was on the one of the lower floors, but it did have a balcony or something in it. Why did he have to go all the way up to the penthouse, in the middle of the night, to just stand and… what? Tony did not really know the other man so good and, frankly, it was part of the problem. It's what made Tony kind of… worried for his friend from time to time.

For a moment Tony just stood there, glass in hand, contemplating whether or not he should go and talk to the man right then. He didn't feel quite up to the task. Bruce… was a complicated character, a still-waters-run-deep kind of guy, and that probably meant some serious talk happening between them. So did he really have to do that – after all, it was none of his business, and Bruce was a big boy, and if something was wrong…

He sighed and put the glass on the counter. _Do I really have a choice?_

He hated it though. All those "deep" personal talks and heartfelt conversations about "feelings" and "issues" were not his element. He always found some excuse or another to avoid them and tried not to hang around people who were prone to giving him some. That, of course, left him with a pretty small amount of people on the okay-list, but he wasn't complaining. Pepper knew him for ages, and he knew that she knew him, and she knew that he knew that she knew… and most of the time they understood each other without words anyway. Rhodey always preferred actions to words, JARVIS hated the mushy stuff just as much as Tony did, and Bruce… he rarely talked without being spoken to first, and he was horrible even at small talk, let alone serious stuff.

It all was also a part of the reason why Tony Stark did not usually _do_ worried. His friends were able to take care of themselves. And that was more of a Pepper's domain anyway: _she_ seemed to be constantly worried for _him_, while _he_ was never worried for _her_. Why should he? If something was troubling Pepper, she would come to him and say what it was. And he will try to help. Not that he would necessarily be of any use, being who he was, but he'd be damned if he didn't try his hardest. But that wasn't the point. The point was that he could count on Pepper to tell him, because Pepper was all about sharing.

Bruce, on the other hand… If something was troubling _him_, he would repress it, bottle it, hide it under the thick layer of calm and deny any and all evidence of the very fact that he was a human being with feelings, fears and whatever. Because Bruce was all about repressing.

So yeah, you could never tell with the guy. Most of the time he looked absolutely fine.

_So did I, when I was dying two years ago._

And then there were times when he _did not_ look fine at all, when he looked kind of confused and haunted, lost in some kind of a weird waking dream…

Those were the bad days. Everyone had them. On his, Tony cut off all the phones and drank himself to oblivion. Now, Bruce never drank anything stronger than a light beer, but that only meant that he had another kind of dealing strategy, something that included…

Well, apparently it included Bruce standing on the edge of the landing pad, his hands in his pockets, staring into the night city.

_What the hell_, Tony thought as he downed his scotch and walked towards the glass doors. _I may as well be this poor bastard's only chance at an actual friendly conversation_. He _was_ a philanthropist after all.

Even if he's heard or seen Tony's approach, Bruce made no indication of it, eyes locked on the road three hundred feet below them. Tony stopped just beside the man, studying him for a minute.

The sight was mildly alarming. Not because all the signs showed that Bruce might've been contemplating some stupid shit he _should not even think about ever again_. Tony knew him enough to be sure that he would not actually try it, not in the nearest future anyway. No, it was alarming because Bruce Banner, Tony Stark's repressed best friend, was standing there all alone, thinking, staring into nothingness and smiling that eerie little smile that made Tony think '_bag of cats_' for some reason.

And he was obviously in no mood for talking. The silence stretched.

"Pretty loud out here, huh?" Tony finally said to no-one in particular.

Bruce spared Tony a quick glance, nodded distractedly and then turned back to watching cars, lights and people scrambling in the darkness – chaotic and restless pulse of the nightlife.

Tony made another try.

"You look terrible," he said, turning back, letting his gaze rest on the bleak and faraway scattering of the stars up in the sky.

This seemed to work.

"And you look, um…" Bruce struggled to find something to say, but failed miserably.

_Terrible at small talk_, Tony smirked to himself, but said only "Don't bother."

Still, Bruce felt it necessary to say something, if only to appear polite, so after a moment or two he came up with a simple enough question.

"How was the movie?"

"Not bad, all things considered," Tony shrugged. "Pepper was ecstatic. I never really liked Batman though. Too much psych shit going on."

"Yeah," Bruce chuckled. "That's never a good thing for a superhero movie."

The silence settled once again. Now it was Tony who searched for something to say, searched amongst the dim stars above him. The stars were silent too. _In space no-one can hear you scream_. The line came to his mind suddenly, making him smirk. Who would even want that? Amongst all the light and the darkness, all that _space_ and _music_, what will there be left to say…

The stars, god, were they beautiful. How comes he never noticed it before the invasion? So beautiful and far away. He would've understood how Bruce could stand here for hours, looking at them, he certainly would…

Except Bruce wasn't looking at the stars. Not even a glimpse. Whatever he came here to see, it was below them, somewhere among the streets of the city that never slept. And despite his better judgment, some tiny, paranoid part of Tony's mind told him that a thing his friend was looking for was, in fact, a quick way out. It was a deeply unsettling, sickening thought, and Tony needed to hear that it was completely unfounded. He needed to hear it right then.

"So, what are you doing here?" he asked as casually as possible, not looking directly at Bruce, but stealing glimpses of him from the corner of his eye.

Bruce did not respond, and Tony wasn't sure if he even heard the question. It wasn't at all reassuring, but, just as Tony was about to ask again, he heard his friend talk in a quiet and a little detached voice.

"It is really high here, isn't it? The fall… it would take seven to eight seconds or so…" he muttered, not moving his eyes from the street.

"I guess." _Still not very reassuring_. "Kind of forgot to look at the watch last time I fell from here…"

"You did? When?"

"During the invasion. Loki pushed me out of that window."

"Must've been great…" Bruce whispered to himself so quietly that Tony barely caught it.

"Not _exactly_…" he said slowly, eying the other man with suspicion. _Don't you think what I think you're thinking. Don't you think I'll actually_ let _you…_

But Bruce was now looking at him and probably reading Tony's thoughts, because just as they took the most sombre tone, he suddenly laughed, lightly and quietly, but genuinely, and shook his head, as if he considered them really amusing. Though, knowing Bruce, he probably did. _All_ the time.

The scientist turned away once again, a smile still on his face, but did not look down this time. Instead he stared right ahead, looking at something just beyond the horizon, and his voice and his gaze, his whole stance became distant, detached and… somewhat ethereal, even.

"It was… almost two years ago now. During the last time I was in New York," he began. "I was in the helicopter over the city, and the other guy was needed on the ground, fast. So I… jumped." There was no pain in his voice, no fear. Just memories. "And as I was falling – the ground closing in rapidly, the wind whistling in my ears – I felt him clawing his way out, fighting for his life... And I let him. It was the first time I have actually _let_ him out. And in that moment, right before losing myself to him, I felt… almost free. Almost… _free_," his voice became more and more quiet with each sentence, last words being nothing but a whisper. Tony looked closely at his friend and was actually surprised to find a dreamy, almost wistful expression on his face. "This feeling," Bruce continued after a small pause, "this memory… later it gave me the strength to get over some of my, um… problems. To find a way again."

"Before or after you shot yourself in the face?" Tony smirked.

Bruce chuckled and closed his eyes for a long moment. And when he opened them again to face Tony, there _was_ pain in them, the one that was _always,_ forever there, but it was deep, hidden beneath humour and gratefulness and something as close to joy as he had ever seen there.

"After. Right after," Bruce smiled and took another quick look down on the streets. "I like it here. Just… standing, you know, thinking what it would feel like to…" he shrugged. "Must be great."

"Was it like that when you let him out on the aliens?"

"No," he muttered uncertainly, slowly shaking his head. "I thought, maybe it was the free fall, or him actually _trying_ to break out, or all of it. Letting it _all_ go..." he sighed. "No, never since."

Tony only smirked. _Weird, but poetic. Sounds just like you, Banner._

Tony himself was never big on this. He was many, _many _things, but certainly not… poetic. And yet, as he looked at the night sky once again, a thought struck him.

"So, now I should probably tell you what a weird shit you've got going for yourself, Brucie, but hey… we're all mad here," he started with his trademark 'I say what I want' tone that kind of broke on the last words. He did not look at his friend. He was not even seeing the stars, not anymore, as he went on, with easy ingenuousness that was his second nature. "When I entered the Portal of Doom with that nuke on my back, I was kinda ready. I said my goodbyes… well, my mental goodbyes," he added with some faked bitterness. He actually wanted to have a long and heart-to-heart talk with Pepper about _answering her goddamned phone_ when it _really_ mattered, that ended surprisingly quickly and, for some reason, in their bedroom. "And I was ready. And then," he paused, recalling the memory in all its vividness. _A great void, but not empty… filled with _existence. "I was in the outer space. And there was that whole alien fleet, and their bigass flagship, and all those planets and stars and shit… And I, I felt so… so _small_ and insignificant and, right before the reactor shut off…" _An endless sea of light and darkness_. "…yeah, almost free." _Letting it all go_. "I miss it."

As he turned to look at Bruce, Tony saw the other man watching the stars with a thoughtful expression and a soft, amused smile. But he did not understand it. And Tony was _not_ being poetic, it was just what it was. He _could not _understand, because he wasn't there, hasn't witnessed it firsthand, not even for a second, that _magnificent, horrible expanse_.

And yet, in that moment Tony felt that the other man understood it all.

But wasn't that why they were both standing here in the middle of the night? They understood. They were all about understanding.

The silence now was comforting. Welcoming. And Tony felt that there was only one thing worth saying at that point.

"What about the week-end?"

"I'm sorry?" Bruce blinked a few times, obviously not following Tony's train of thought.

"No, really. I mean, yeah, I'm kind of busy right now with the company and the reconstruction, but what about the week-end? You, me and my helicopter over Adirondack or whatever, feeling as free as we can. Or even a jet, it can go higher."

"And I bet the other guy could launch you into orbit, if you ask nicely," Bruce chuckled, shaking his head.

Tony only shrugged, a smug smile on his face. Why the hell not? He was Tony Fucking Stark, and that was what he did for fun: he pushed his friends out of helicopters over unpopulated areas. Yeah. If it felt right, it had to be right, and _damn_ if it didn't feel like the most reasonable _and_ fun thing to do. The two of them, going straight to the bottom only to rise again, all the way up to the stars.

And no, he was _not_ being poetic about it.

After all, it was their life. There were good days and bad days, sure, and maybe sometimes it seemed like the whole universe was out to get them, but hey. They were managing. Making the best they could out of it. Finding something worthwhile, something to hold on to, someone…

"Thanks."

…to stand with at night on the edge of the landing pad and stare at the abyss-of-choice. Up or down. In or out.

Someone to help you _feel_…

"You too."

…not quite, but almost free.


End file.
